Server Status
Dashboard

The Cisco Prime
IP Express server status dashboard in the web user interface (web UI)
presents a graphical view of the system status, using graphs, charts, and
tables, to help in tracking and diagnosis. These dashboard elements are
designed to convey system information in an organized and consolidated way, and
include:

Significant
protocol server and other metrics

Alarms and alerts

Database
inventories

Server health
trends

The dashboard is best
used in a troubleshooting desk context, where the system displaying the
dashboard is dedicated for that purpose and might be distinct from the systems
running the protocol servers. The dashboard system should point its browser to
the system running the protocol servers.

You should interpret
dashboard indicators in terms of deviations from your expected normal usage
pattern. If you notice unusual spikes or drops in activity, there could be
communication failures or power outages on the network that you need to
investigate.

Opening the
Dashboard

Starting from Cisco
Prime
IP Express 9.0, the Dashboard feature is available on the
regional cluster also. It provides System Metrics chart by default. It allows
you to display the server specific (DHCP, DNS, and CDNS) charts for various
clusters. This can be configured in the Chart Selections page.

To open the dashboard
in the web UI, from the
Operate menu,
choose
Dashboard.

Display
Types

Provided you have
DHCP and DNS privileges through administrator roles assigned to you, the preset
display of the dashboard consists of the following tables (See the table below
for an example):

General Status
Indicators

Note the green
indicator in the Server State description in the above image. This indicates
that the server sourcing the information is functioning normally. A yellow
indicator indicates that server operation is less than optimum. A red indicator
indicates that the server is down. These indicators are the same as for the
server health on the Manage Servers page in the regular web UI.

Graphic Indicators
for Levels of Alert

Graphed lines and
stacked areas in the charts follow a standard color and visual coding so that
you can immediately determine key diagnostic indicators at a glance. The charts
use the following color and textural indicators:

Highalertsorwarnings—Lines or areas in red, with a hatched
texture.

Allotherindicators—Lines or areas in various other colors
distinguish the data elements. The charts do not use green or yellow.

Magnifying and
Converting Charts

You can magnify a
chart in a separate window by clicking the
Chart Link
icon at the bottom of the panel chart and then by clicking the
Magnified Chart
option (see the image below). In magnified chart view, you can
choose an alternative chart type from the one that comes up initially (see
Other Chart Types).
Figure 2. Magnifying
Charts

Note

Automatic
refresh is turned off for magnified charts (see
Setting the Polling Interval).
To get the most recent data, click the
Refresh icon
next to the word Dashboard at the top left of the page.

Legends

Tables

Dashboard elements
rendered as tables have data displayed in rows and columns. The following
dashboard elements are preset to consist of (or include) tables:

DHCP DNS Updates

DHCP Address Current
Utilization

DHCP General Indicators

DNS General Indicators

Caching DNS General
Indicators

Note

If you view a table
in Expert mode, additional data might appear.

Line Charts

Dashboard elements
rendered as line charts can include one or more lines plotted against the x and
y axes. The three types of line charts are described in the following table.

Table 1 Line Chart
Types

Type of Line
Chart

Description

Dashboard
Elements Rendered

Raw data line
chart

Lines plotted
against raw data.

Java Virtual Machine (JVM)
Memory Utilization (Expert mode only)

DHCP Buffer Capacity

DHCP Failover Status (two
charts)

DNS Network Errors

DNS Related Servers Errors

Delta line
chart

Lines plotted
against the difference between two sequential raw data.

DNS Inbound Zone Transfers

DNS Outbound Zone Transfers

Rate line
chart

Lines plotted
against the difference between two sequential raw data divided by the sample
time between them.

DHCP Server Request Activity
(see the image below)

DHCP Server Response
Activity

DHCP Response Latency

DNS Query Responses

DNS Forwarding Errors

Tip

To get the raw data
for a chart that shows delta or rate data, enter Expert mode, go to the
required chart, click the
Chart Link
icon at the bottom of the panel chart, and then click
Data Table
(see
Displaying Charts as Tables).
The Raw Data table is below the Chart Data table.

Figure 3. Line Chart
Example

Area Charts

Dashboard elements
rendered as area charts have multiple related metrics plotted as trend charts,
but stacked one on top of the other, so that the highest point represents a
cumulative value. The values are independently shaded in contrasting colors.
(See the image below for an example of the DHCP Server Request Activity chart
shown in
Figure 1
rendered as an area chart.)

Figure 4. Area Chart
Example

They are stacked in
the order listed in the legend, the left-most legend item at the bottom of the
stack and the right-most legend item at the top of the stack. The dashboard
elements that are pre-set to area chart are:

Refreshing
Displays

Refresh each display
so that it picks up the most recent polling by clicking the
Refresh icon.

Setting the
Polling Interval

You can set how
often to poll for data. Click the
Dashboard
Settings icon in the upper-right corner of the dashboard display. There are
four options to set the polling interval of the cached data, which polls the
protocol servers for updates. (See the image below)
Figure 5. Setting the
Chart Polling Interval

You can set the
cached data polling (hence, automatic refresh) interval to:

Disabled— Does not poll,
therefore does not automatically refresh the data.

Slow— Refreshes the data
every 30 seconds.

Medium— Refreshes the
data every 20 seconds.

Fast (the preset value)—
Refreshes the data every 10 seconds.

Displaying Charts
as Tables

Use the
Chart Link
icon at the bottom of the panel chart to view the chart link options (see the
image below). You can choose to display a graphic chart as a table by clicking
the
Data Table
option.

Figure 6. Specifying
Chart Conversion to Table Format

Exporting to CSV
Format

You can dump the
chart data to a comma-separated value (CSV) file (such as a spreadsheet). In
the Chart Link controls at the bottom of the panel charts (see
Figure 2),
click the
CSVExport option. A Save As window appears, where you
can specify the name and location of the CSV file.

Selecting Dashboard
Elements to Include

You can decide how
many dashboard elements you want to display on the page. At times, you might
want to focus on one server activity only, such as for the DHCP server, and
exclude all other metrics for the other servers. In this way, the dashboard
becomes less crowded, the elements are larger and more readable. At other
times, you might want an overview of all server activities, with a resulting
smaller element display.

You can select the
dashboard elements to display from the main Dashboard page by clicking the
Dashboard Settings icon and then clicking
ChartSelections in the Dashboard Settings dialog.
Clicking the link opens the Chart Selection page (see
Figure 1).

Configuring Server
Chart Types

You can set the
default chart types on the main dashboard view. You can customize the server
charts in the dashboard to display only the specific chart types as default.

To set up default
chart type, check the check box corresponding to the Metrics chart that you
want to display and choose a chart type from the
Type drop-down
list. The default chart types are consistent and shared across different user
sessions (see the image below).

Note

You can see either
the CDNS or DNS Metrics in the
Dashboard
Settings >
Chart Selection
page based on the service configured on the server.

Tip

The order in which
the dashboard elements appear in the Chart Selection list does not necessarily
determine the order in which the elements will appear on the page. An algorithm
that considers the available space determines the order and size in a grid
layout. The layout might be different each time you submit the dashboard
element selections. To change selections, check the check box next to the
dashboard element that you want to display.

Figure 7. Selecting
Dashboard Elements

The above image
displays the Charts Selection table in the regional web UI. The Clusters column
is available only in regional dashboard and it displays the list of local
clusters configured. You can add the local cluster by clicking the Edit icon
and then by selecting the local cluster name from the Local Cluster List dialog
box.

To change selections,
check the check box next to the dashboard element that you want to display.

Specific group
controls are available in the
ChangeChartSelection drop-down list, at the top of the page
(see the image above). To:

Click
OK at the
bottom of the page to save your choices, or
Cancel to
cancel the changes.

Starting from release
9.1, you can change the chart type by clicking the
Chart Type icon
at the bottom of the panel chart and then by selecting the required chart type
(see the image below). The different types of chart available are: Line Chart,
Column Chart, Area Chart, and Scatter Chart.
Figure 8. Selecting the
Chart Type

Host Metrics

System
Metrics

The System Metrics
dashboard element shows the free space on the disk volumes where the Cisco
Prime
IP Express logs and database directories are located, the
date and time of the last server backup, and CPU and memory usage for the
various servers. System metrics are available if you choose
HostMetrics:
SystemMetrics in the Chart Selection list.

The resulting table
shows:

LogsVolume—Current free space out of the total space
on the disk drive where the logs directory is located, with the equivalent
percentage of free space.

DatabaseVolume—Current free space out of the total space
on the disk drive where the data directory is located, with the equivalent
percentage of free space.

LastGoodBackup—Date and time when the last successful
shadow database backup occurred (or Not Done if it did not yet occur) since the
server agent was last started.

How to Interpret
the Data

The System Metrics
data shows how full your disk volumes are getting based on the available free
space for the Cisco Prime
IP Express logs and data volumes. It also shows if you had
a last successful backup of the data files and when that occurred. Finally, it
shows how much of the available CPU and memory the Cisco Prime
IP Express servers are using. The difference in the memory
and VM utilization values is:

MemoryUtilization—Physical memory that a process uses,
or roughly equivalent to the Resident Set Size (RSS) value in UNIX
ps command
output, or to the Task Manager Mem Usage value in Windows: the number of pages
the process has in real memory minus administrative usage. This value includes
only the pages that count toward text, data, or stack space, but not those
demand-loaded in or swapped out.

VMUtilization—Virtual memory that a process uses, or
roughly equivalent to the SZ value in UNIX
ps command
output, or to the Task Manager VM Size value in Windows: the in-memory pages
plus the page files and demand-zero pages, but not usually the memory-mapped
files. This value is useful in diagnosing how large a process is and if it
continues to grow.

Troubleshooting
Based on the Results

If you notice the
free disk space decreasing for the logs or data directory, you might want to
consider increasing the disk capacity or look at the programs you are running
concurrently with Cisco Prime
IP Express.

JVM Memory
Utilization

The Java Virtual
Machine (JVM) Memory Utilization dashboard element is available only when you
are in Expert mode. It is rendered as a line trend chart that traces the Unused
Maximum, Free, and Used bytes of JVM memory. The chart is available if you
choose
Host Metrics: JVM
Memory Utilization in the Chart Selection list when you are in Expert mode.